Where do you think online poker will be in a year and why?

[Indiana]

Discuss.

[yenman]

i think the keyword will be consolidation.

sites will merge to create mega sites as smaller sites will not be able to continue and be bought out.

with the poker boom slowing... the player pool will consolidate too. money will slowly trickle to the hands of the elite players, raising the bar of competition. the multi tabling TAG bots that propsered with ABC style will nolonger find themselves profitable.

you learn very little about poker, especially nl holdem, by multi-tabling. MTing TAGs are going to be carved up by players who play less tables but are more talented and observant. This will prbably break many current semi-pros to become break even players.

[lfairban]

Legislators supporting the online gambling prohibition will surpress the information about the overall lact of progress in implamenting it. Several lawsuits will be filed to reverse regulatory actions that are arguably outside what is or can be mandated by the law. The regulatory agencies may be still trying to come up will procedures subsequent to the gambling provisions of the SAFE Ports Act during a time extention. The amount of online poker will have recently risen about the pre-ban levels.

[WarBus]

Many small sites will close due to the banning of US customers. Definitely not a good time to have a large part of your roll in a small site.

The big 3 will be Full Tilt, Pokerstars, and ?. The third big player could be Absolute/UB or the Tribeca Network. It depends on if AP/UB share players and how many sites move to the Tribeca Network.

Online poker will not grow and could very well shrink unless sites figure out a way to maintain visibility in order to attract casual players.

There will be fewer online pros and semi-pros. Many of whom will have been slight winners who made money by volume and bonuses.

You will see many of the smaller RB affiliates close up and many 2+2ers bitching about how they are owed money by their former RB provider.

The first steps toward legislation regulating and taxing online poker will have begun. It would be very foolish for the US government to pass up the massive amounts of tax revenue from online gambling. Although, the government is known to do things that are not in their own best interest.

[gutte169]

Bots, Bots, and more Bots. Only semi-serious, but I think 90% of people don't realize how big of a threat this is.

It will most likely return to how it was 2-3 years ago. The games will slowly dry up. I highly agree that most low-limit TAGs who are making $30-$40/hour multitabling 1/2 2/4 and whoring bonuses will be the first to go. Marketing will also slow down, and that will drastically effect the number of new players.

Tournaments will retain popularity, since the majority of newish/fishy players find them the funnest and easiest way to "hit it big". I'd like to think that online tournaments start getting a little more exposure, maybe even making online tournament pros household names. I definetly think it should be the first priority for online sites to draw new players. There's still a large portion of the general public who consider tournaments fun and exciting but live games to be pure degenerate gambling.

[Richas]

http://www.nma.co.uk/Articles/29797/Future+of+online+gaming+lies+with+British+governme nt.html

Well according to the CEO's of Party and 888 it will be in the UK.

A year from now I expect several of the main sites to be UK based for the tough regulation and the respectability that goes with it. I also expect the EU to be taking a lead in the WTO against the US on this partly as a result of the tax dollars (OK GBP) that the UK will be getting and partly just because they can stuff the US on this and they'd like that.

I also expect lots of articles about how many USD the UK Treasury is banking while the US players play on in defiance of the Ports Act.

[Indiana]

These are all very good insights. Does anybody believe that stars and full tilt will just shut down and we will see an end to online poker completely?

Indy

[5thStreetHog]

[ QUOTE ]
These are all very good insights. Does anybody believe that stars and full tilt will just shut down and we will see an end to online poker completely?

Indy

[/ QUOTE ]Would that equal the end? Obviously would be a crushing blow.Ive considered that a remote possibilty to be honest.Im keeping some flow in worldpx as a kinda safeguard for that scenario.Just because of all the sites it seems to me like youd have to kill those guys to stop them from doing business.But seriously,i hope the last few "big" guys dont leave in the future.That would be a big can of worms.

[fishbutt]

Sorry, but was is a "MTing TAG"? Specifically, what does TAG mean/stand for?

[jrz1972]

[ QUOTE ]
These are all very good insights. Does anybody believe that stars and full tilt will just shut down and we will see an end to online poker completely?

[/ QUOTE ]

No. The US market is far too large and far to lucrative to go unserved.

This legislation definitely sucks, but it doesn't change the fact that prohibition doesn't work.

[RemyXO]

[ QUOTE ]
Sorry, but was is a "MTing TAG"? Specifically, what does TAG mean/stand for?

[/ QUOTE ]

Multi-tabling Tight Aggressive Players. You see one - you run away, brother /images/graemlins/grin.gif

[Harv72b]

[ QUOTE ]
Sorry, but was is a "MTing TAG"? Specifically, what does TAG mean/stand for?

[/ QUOTE ]

Multi-Tabling Tight/AGgressive player.

One question I'm really interested in is seeing if this legislation slows the "poker boom" down even further. I can't imagine that new players will enter the game nearly as often if it becomes difficult to deposit funds and/or play on the online sites. And just like the Stars advertising campaign says, it can be intimidating to walk into a B&M poker room for the first time.

If there are fewer new players, the interest starts to dry up, there's less poker on tv....well, you can see the trend towards a downhill spiral if that's the case.

[lozen]

I think your forgetting that there are other countries besides the USA playing. I say 1/2 the pool is gone but the other half is still huge. Small sites will suffer and drop off. More players will move over to Full tilt, absolute and Stars. i see it being harder to find games at certain times though. I just cant see these sites trying to find away around it.

[sandycove]

My crystal ball?

1. Within a year, new player acquisition from the U.S. market will have dried up completely, as providers lose access to marketing platforms and grow weary of an increasingly hostile regulatory environment.

2. A dwindling hard-core U.S. market will mill around, hustling dwindling profit opportunities. Players and gaming ventures alike will lose enthusiasm and grow stale. American-based poker “celebrities” will have become distant-memory, one-hit wonders. Books, magazines, forums, paraphernalia, and the like, will have become lightly pursued, lightly read, lightly used curiosities. The "World" Series of Poker will revert to being as "worldly" as the "World" Series of Baseball. Some people we "know" will go to jail. More will be threatened by zealous prosecutors.

3. There will be absolutely no interest whatsoever in Congress over the legislation, pro or con. The issue has no viable constituency. The casino lobby might have taken a stab at a regulated domestic venture, but they are ambivalent and, after Abramoff, the issue was always going to be DOA.

4. The worldwide market, primarily Europe, South America and “greater” Australia, will stabilize at about 20 percent of pre-legislation volumes, having dropped lower, and begin a period of modest, sustained growth, supported by bread and butter marketing efforts, associated poker tours and tournaments and infomercial television.

5. The alleged Asian internet poker boom will remain a stillborn pipe dream.

6. Entrepreneurs in the United Kingdom will see a great opportunity to take the lead in internet gaming, the government in Great Britain and the City will be intrigued by the financial possibilities, and the citizenry will struggle with the moral and social implications, egged on by a party that positions itself against it. There will be a brief, but wild-and-woolly battle over market share in preparation. The European Union will struggle as well with these issues and, once again, Sterling vs the Euro will emerge as an issue.

7. Mason Malmuth will issue a statement. There will be no one present to read it.

[Little_Luck]

Whether it be in one year or 2-3 years, online poker will have a new golden-age. Whether it be from regulated interstate online rooms, the right people finally being paid off (since that is the only way anything will ever get done in america, see NFL contribs to anti-gambling acts) or a poker carve-out/judges start giving favorable verdicts on legality/WTO case.

[Mroberts3]

Sandy, I think you have some good points, if perhaps they are a little pessemistic. I think generally speaking you have the right idea, however I think you overestimate the efficiency of the law and underestimate the average player's need to get his fix. Yes, new player levels will go down and there will be a contraction in the market. However, poker is a fun game and I expect it to continue to be relativly easy to access. There is no reason to think than Phil Ivey will be lost in history. Poker on TV is still interesting to new players and I hope playing online will still be a possibility. Poker will be around and flourishing, just in a more relaxed state. (We just went through 5-6 years of the poker gold rush, now that might be over but unlike gold in california, the bankrolls of fish are constantly replenished by real jobs.)

[StellarWind]

Several years ago shadowy entrepreneurs emerged offering rakeback to serious poker players.

Within a year a new breed of underground entrepreneur will emerge to serve serious poker players. He will provide offshore financial accounts to bypass American banking regulations and fake documents for registering with the proliferating "no-U.S." sites. He'll also provide computer security software and proxy services to ensure his customers keep their new accounts. Unlike many currently available generic proxy services, the new online gambling services will address poker-specific problems like nonsharing of IP addresses and deceiving the snoopy poker client.

Fraudsters and cheaters will adopt the new services to their own needs and the sites will have great difficulty coping. It's not that anything truly new will be happening, but it will be much more within the reach of unsophisticated perpetrators.

Serious non-gambling crime will spread in two ways:

1. Covert gambling channels will be coopted for money laundering and identity crimes.

2. Some of the providers will turn rogue once they realize the lucrative criminal opportunities that their new skills and contacts provide them.

[Richas]

[ QUOTE ]

4. The worldwide market, primarily Europe, South America and “greater” Australia, will stabilize at about 20 percent of pre-legislation volumes, having dropped lower, and begin a period of modest, sustained growth, supported by bread and butter marketing efforts, associated poker tours and tournaments and infomercial television.

5. The alleged Asian internet poker boom will remain a stillborn pipe dream.

[/ QUOTE ]

I think you are under-calling European growth significantly. Europe is still pretty virgin territory and the new player acquisition is going well. Saturday night I was asking at my Meetup game where people played and it was Ladbrokes, PaddyPower, BetFair, nearly everyone was only one site, non-US and bonuses were not discussed. There is a new generation of grinder out there waiting to be born. The standard of play by the amateur live players I meet is pretty good but Europe is very early in the process.

The propensity and enthusiasm shown by Asians for gambling including the Chinese is something to behold. UK casinos are mobbed by Chinese as soon as they finish work they love it. There is lots of room for growth out East.

As for the US I am a bit less sure but I'd expect a growth in home games organised via the Internet and for overall growth to carry on. The Internet provides access to Nigerian 911 scammers, fake viagra pushers and it will if anything be easier for those promoting Internet Poker accounts in the US (especially if the email databases of the sites closing to US players walk out the door with a couple of managers as I fully expect). Prohibition will not make Poker any less appealing in High Schools and Colleges.

[sputum]

[ QUOTE ]
Where do you think online poker will be in a year and why?

[/ QUOTE ]
Nobody really knows where it is now /images/graemlins/grin.gif

[FLOPBUSTER]

I am waiting to see 2007 WSOP player count. Alot of Americans that woulda qualified will not be there. Sadly a big blow is comming to poker soon. /images/graemlins/frown.gif

[vabogee]

does everyone really think the future is this f-ing bleak?

[mikeh1975]

all depends on how much its enforced.

[manub]

I may be naive but here's my prediction.

Not much will change. The market will continue to grow slowly as it has for the last couple of years until it stagnates.

I may be wrong but I don't remember any multi-billion dollar industries collapsing because of a few laws. Can someone offer a contradicting example?

I'm also surprised the peer-to-peer comparison was never brought up. Granted, it's a different kind of "industry". But the way I see it, governments allied with huge corporations could not bring down a decentralized worldwide network. It's not exactly the same thing as online Poker, but to me it proved one thing: big trends like that are here to stay.

[ginko]

I think poker will do just fine. Worst case scenerio is that all banking transactions will be blocked, best case is that they wont be enforced.

People will still deposit and withdraw.

Poker in Europe will get bigger and bigger and we might see a new poker boom. Remember, in Europe, the wealth is spread more evenly among the population, unlike in the USA. And poker is gaining a lot of momentum there. PokerStars and Full Tilt will advertise aggressively there with the .com's instead of .net's.

Further, the break even players and small winning players will become the new fish to the better TAGs.

Stars will give permanent rakeback, they will get faster software, and higher limit games.

New legislation will be getting primed to regulate online poker(already happening in Cali).

I'm not too worried to be honest.

[jrz1972]

[ QUOTE ]
does everyone really think the future is this f-ing bleak?

[/ QUOTE ]

I don't. If nothing surprising works its way into the regulations coming down over the next 9 months, I don't think the future is particularly bleak at all.

The landscape of the industry will be very different than what it was last month, of course. Party will forever be just one more site that doesn't accept Americans, but it's days of 5-digit peaks at Scout are over.

The main thing is that Americans will still be able to fund their Neteller accounts, they'll still be able to play at a handful of major sites, and good players will still be able to win. The poker boom was slowing down anyway, and I'm sure UIGE won't help matters, so I'd expect to see winrates drop somewhat. Otherwise it's not that far from business as usual.

My prediction is that this time next year, we'll look back on UIGE as a huge bullet that we dodged. It's not particularly effective legislation, but it's probably enough to preempt any further action by future Congresses.

[ronster71]

Maybe I'm too optimistic, but I don't see a lot changing on this...only a few minor changes so far, with a 270 day window in which I would think this whole situation will work itself out via the gov. regulating it...just a thought

[Banana Joe]

where i play it is still business as usual.

At the european site where i play they have not allowed americans for several months and they keep growing.

With pokerstars stance im pretty sure even maericans will have a battlegound for years to come!

[catcher193]

Full Tilt and Pokerstars will grow in size, nothing will happen to them or any of us, no enforcement will take place in the next year.

Partypoker will return to the US market in a year.

Rake will cost about half as much as it does now.